Polymers are used in a variety of applications such as adhesives, paints, paper coatings and textile coatings. Many of these polymers are manufactured using a process called emulsion polymerization.
Emulsion polymerization is a type of radical polymerization that usually starts with an emulsion of water, monomer and emulsifier. In general, the formation of an emulsion follows two steps. First, at least two components that include immiscible liquid phases are pre-mixed. Generally, this pre-mixing occurs in the presence of a suitable amount of one or more emulsifiers in order to create droplets of a dispersed liquid phase in another continuous liquid phase. Second, the droplets resulting from this pre-mixing step are disrupted by shear forces that result in a more stable emulsion of much smaller droplets.
The pre-mixing step, however, adds equipment costs to the emulsification polymerization process, increases the hold up of the reactive monomer mixtures, can add downtime and associated costs to the process, and affects the precision of the reactive monomer mixture feed to the polymerization reactor by increasing residence time throughout the emulsification system.
Therefore, it is desirable to have simplified apparatuses and methods for the production of monomer emulsions used in emulsion polymerization processes.